His front-runner status evaporating to Gov. Rick Perry in the Republican race for the White House, Mitt Romney nonetheless stuck to a strategy of lambasting President Barack Obama in a speech Tuesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention here.

One remark resonated, however, for its possible application to Perry, who spoke a day earlier to considerably more applause in the same hall at the Convention Center.

“I’m a conservative businessman,” said Romney, who served four years as Massachusetts governor. “I spent most of my life outside politics dealing with real problems in the real economy. Career politicians got us into this mess, and they simply don’t know how to get us out.”

Perry, who has been governor for more than a decade, surged ahead of Romney this week in three national polls. His spokes- man, Mark Miner, deflected the association.

“Gov. Perry worked as a farmer and served in the military for a combined 19 years,” he said. “Clearly, Mitt Romney must have been talking about someone else in his remarks today.”

Romney’s spokesman, Ryan Williams, also threw cold water on some heated inferences that Romney finally had turned to face his most immediate threat.

“Gov. Romney has used that line in speeches before. It’s nothing new,” Williams said. “We’ve got plenty of time to contrast records.”

One contrast: Perry flew cargo planes for five years in the U.S. Air Force, while Romney avoided military service, receiving deferments for missionary service and school.

In his speech, Romney declared America must “rise above politics” to secure its future. Yet he spent much of his time attacking Obama, blaming him for a precarious economy and casting the president’s foreign policy as timid.

“Have we ever had a president who’s so eager to address the world with an apology on his lips and doubt in his heart?” Romney said. “He seems truly confused, not only about America’s past but also about its future.”

Romney derided the administration’s proposal to cut military spending by $400 million over 12 years, accusing Obama of wishful thinking that the world is becoming safer.

“The opposite is true,” he said. “Consider simply the jihadists, a turbulent Middle East, an unstable Pakistan, a delusional North Korea, an assertive Russia and an emerging global power called China.”

Romney accused Obama of deliberately weakening the military to encourage peace.

“That may be what they think in that Harvard faculty lounge, but it’s not what they know on the battlefield!” said Romney, who received law and business degrees from Harvard graduate schools.

While promising to spend more money on ships, planes, troops and veterans, Romney said he would “slice billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency and bureaucracy from the defense budget.”

That point resonated among some veterans in the audience.

“Especially the idea of cutting the fat,” said Russ Friday, 59, a Vietnam veteran. “They’ll have 10 supervisors watching the same person.”

Chuck Anfuso, another Vietnam vet, said eliminating waste and boosting resources for troops was essential, but he expressed doubt that would happen.

“It sounds like every other politician’s speech,” said Anfuso, 71. “They promise this. They promise that. And then they get into office and nothing happens.